In an historic public response to the US Federal Communications Commission's request for comments regarding its forthcoming National Broadband Plan, due before Congress on February 17, AT&T acknowledged not the forthcoming obsolescence, but the current obsolescence of the wireline telephone system. Without shame, it even applied the once-degrading acronym "POTS" (Plain Old Telephone System), interchangeably with "PSTN" (Public Switched Telephone Network), to refer to the one-time marvel of technology that defined its predecessor, the Bell System, in the 20th century.

In an historic public response to the US Federal Communications Commission's request for comments regarding its forthcoming National Broadband Plan, due before Congress on February 17, AT&T acknowledged not the forthcoming obsolescence, but the current obsolescence of the wireline telephone system. Without shame, it even applied the once-degrading acronym "POTS" (Plain Old Telephone System), interchangeably with "PSTN" (Public Switched Telephone Network), to refer to the one-time marvel of technology that defined its predecessor, the Bell System, in the 20th century.